The single biggest reason why startups succeed | Bill Gross

Gross was born in Middletown, Ohio, the son of Shirley (née Tait), a homemaker, and Sewell Mark Gross, a sales executive for AK Steel Holding.
Part of his family is originally from Winnipeg, Canada.

He was raised a Presbyterian.
He moved with his parents to San Francisco in 1954.
Gross graduated from Duke University in 1966 as an Angier B. Duke Scholar, and with a degree in psychology.
At Duke, he joined Phi Kappa Psi.

He then served in the Navy from 1966 to 1969 as an assistant chief engineer aboard the USS Diachenko, leading several sorties of SEALS to landing sites along the coast of Vietnam.

He retired from the Navy in 1970 with the Tet combat and Vietnam active service ribbons. Gross earned an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management in 1971. Gross briefly played blackjack professionally in Las Vegas, Nevada, and has said that he applies many of his gambling methods for spreading risk and calculating odds to his investment decisions.